I have shared before that I am trying to learn how to “be” with my feelings. I am trying not to analyze them or avoid them. My therapist advised me to do this years ago, but it doesn’t come naturally for me. Who wants to sits around feeling “bad” for days or weeks on end?
For whatever reason, this is what I have felt drawn to do this time around. I have been in a cocooning place, not really wanting much interaction with the outside world. That’s unusual for me because I am a social person. While I do need “me time,” I also draw energy from connecting with other people. However, for the past few weeks, I haven’t been calling many people. I have withdrawn into my shell.
I actually saw some results from this over the past couple of days. Wednesday was less hard. I guess that’s the best way to word it. It felt like I had been carrying weights for a long time, and now some of the weights had been removed. I didn’t feel “good” or “happy.” It just felt “less hard.” I was appreciative of that.
Thursday was even better. I felt “lighter” and more present. I noticed more things around me when I went to the gym and otherwise went about my day. I actually felt like connecting with other people. I called my sister and had lunch with a friend. I was amazed that I actually felt this way, especially with the holidays so close. I am typically getting “worse” by now, not better. I have been trying to observe all of this without analyzing it, which isn’t easy for me.
Sadly, that place did not last. As I engaged in the world again, I found myself getting triggered a lot. I guess that is to be expected at this time of year for me. I am very sensitive to anything that can in any way be construed as criticism at this time of year. I am also very sensitive to other people’s energies, so I can “feel” other people’s negativity.
Perhaps this is a normal part of reengaging in society after disengaging for so long. Again, I am trying not to analyze it, but old habits die hard. I am also trying not to react but just “to be.” I am trying to let go of my own negative reactions to other people’s negativity, and I can see progress there as well.
One piece of self-analysis I was unable to avoid was connecting that I think I am sensitive to other people’s criticism (as I perceive it – I doubt any of these people intended criticism) because I am already working so, so hard through my stuff right now. As Michael shared before, there is no public acknowledgement for all of the hard work I have been doing. I don’t need a to-do list of more changes I need to make. I need to honor how far I have come and don’t need anyone else giving me more to change.
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Congratulations Faith! You have done so much in a relatively short amount of time. I wish I could learn that fast… or I guess a better word is process.
I am also very sensitive to other people’s feelings. I think it’s a great defense mechanism some of us acquire, but it can also be overwhelming. I have had to actually practice staying in my center a lot. Also, I used to wear dark colors a lot which I hear absorbs energies so if I was going out in the world, I’d try to wear pastels. (I know, kooky right?) Not sure if it works really, it may just be a mental prop.
Anyway, enough about me, congratulations again to YOU!
Have a great weekend Faith,
m
mia,
I used to wear only earth tones. Did not have to worry about matching anyway. Now I wear a lot of orange.
I do think wearing different colors CAN make a difference I do not think it Will.
No no kooky at all. It seems to me it only seems kooky if I talk about it. just doing it seems to work.
We have processing trauma shirts we wear to therapy. One is worn out. Kinda smile.
Thanks for sharing that Michael. I mean, it does make a certain amount of sense if you think about how when we are buying cars, that comes into play. (I live in FL, so I stay away from black cars because they absorb too much heat from the sun) So why not other energies? Black holes suck everything up into them right? Wow! I never thought about it like this…. Light bulbs are going off!
Have a great weekend.
Peace,
m
Hi Faith,
i find your blog inspiring. i too have been working on sitting with feelings and “just being”. its amazing the difference it has made to my week if i just sit with the strong emotions and them have their moment. i feel much better afterwards and my day becomes easier. i even go outside into the world sometimes and don’t feel anxious.
you have put in so much hard work and i am happy to see that you can look behind you and see how far you have come.
have an awesome week.
M
thats so great, i hope it keeps getting less hard, take care x
I think this sounds really positive, I try hard to stay with my emotions too but sometimes they feel too overwhelming for me to handle alone. When I have stayed with them and stayed with myself, I have gained more trust in me and more hope for the future. I completely relate to what you say about being more vulnerable to others’ energies when you re-enter the world after such a phase, though, I think it’s inevitable because you make yourself more vulnerable and open when healing alone and then the normal harder shell we have to deal with the outside world is not there. I’ve had some very spiritual experiences with others, though, in that re-engaging phase – random things like a woman picking me out in the street to ask for help because her husband had just died and left his cash card for her but she didn’t know how to find or use a cash machine (ATM), or a little girl asking her mum for an orange from a grocery store and running up to me to give it to me – think these experiences are due to my energies being more open (though can’t stay that way for too long as too vulnerable). I had my aura photographed once at this time and the aura photographer was incredulous at it and said ‘it looked exactly like what the reconstruction of the auras of Jesus Christ’ have looked like – I kid you not! I think this is because healing on such a deep level necessitates compassion for the self, as you have said, and that compassion can be very strong at such times (am not a Christian, but that’s how i understood the compliment).
Hey Ax,
I have a photo of a black line that was not there when I was. I saw this black line the other day as I was making a marble. It was wrapped around the handle I was holding the marble with.
I have always seen auras and sometimes have seen my own against the snow. I do not think about them they are just there.
I was walking with a woman once and a person came up to me in distress and afterwards the woman said “So you are a magnet to? I said yes. Neither of us thought anything about it until later.
Faith,
Good effort!
I find it helpful to understand that when I process emotions from events that are outside of what is known for most people that I can expect experiences from staying with the emotions that is outside what is known. I also find it helpful to accept that this PTSD body will not experience emotions in the same way.
Actually it is not helpful it is critical. And I can give a recent example which in what I have experienced is minor although important.
I experienced being soothed for the first time with my therapist three weeks ago. It was a stand up hug and some of us were there that could be soothed.
The result was not what one might think. I was in a rage later. It was really a few seconds of experiencing being soothed and weeks of disruption.
I experienced soothing making marbles and although other people were there it was an alone thing. Glass work is like that. The result was I was sick to my stomach afterward.
This soothing also seems to have caused cold symptoms that are intermittent. Right now I have no directional hearing as my brain is healing.,
Other things that looking back I have experienced which now I can see as positive are; convulsions, seizures, temporary blindness, temporary deafness, changes in hand dominance, changes in eye dominance, discacuala, dyslexia, loss of motor control, not being able to speak, deperonalzation, derealization etc. I do not think that these experiences are intrinsically necessary for healing from my experiences rather it is the best that can be done with current treatment and understanding of extreme trauma and attempts at mind control. I am aware few get the chance to heal at all.
In short when you search your soul and it has horror to tell you and you listen to your body and it tells you things that are for the most part unknown even in the study of trauma it gets confusing. Nothing for it.
There are long delays in the physical effect of processing some trauma and it is easily interrupted.
There is no experience that the body or soul can have that is outside of the norm that can not be explained away by those that do not understand they do not understand.
I went blind for 2 days once due to healing, completely blind, drs found no reason…
Ax,
I am sorry.
I do have a question. Did it bother you? The reason I ask is I was ambivalent about such things in a weird way.
Thanks.
When I was at the beginning of my healing I was very bothered by such strange symptoms. Now I am very accepting of them. One of the things that happens when I am healing faster is that I break electrical appliances that I touch, I only need to walk near a lightbulb and it blows. This no longer scares me, I understand my brain is rewiring myself and doing what it needs to. So I understand your ambivalence, i think.
Hey Ax,
Thanks for the info on the blindness.
I have the same thing with the light bulbs and such. In my own office with computers I owned no one wanted me to be around the computers as they would malfunction. I once left my therapists office and walked down a hall and the lights flickered as I walked down. It was like a movie.
I have tested this phenomena and am comfortable that it exists and will not be measured by conventional scientific methods.
I have never been able to wear a watch, at times there is no sense in trying to use my cell phone. i can feel when switches are grounding out long before there is any actual effect.
It is not like if I walk in a room a clock will stop more that it is more likely to stop if I am in the room. There seems to have to be some sort of malfunction or electricity going to ground or not going to ground.
Hi, Michael.
My sister can magnetize an object just by touching it. She used to do it as a bar trick. If she holds any knife, she can pick up paperclips with the knife through the magnetism she puts into it.
Since there are physical manifestations of the magnetism/force that some severe child abuse survivors have, it seems like this is a phenomenon that could be studied.
~ Faith
Faith,
Interesting about the magnetism. For some reason I do not want to know if I can do that.
There is also the sexual energy. For some weird reason and it is not looks females find me sexually attractive It wears off simile.
Another think that is weird is if I am in a bar where there are prostitutes working they will never approach me.
I’ll not copy and paste what I wrote in Card from Momster blog, but it can be said here also. My belief is morphic fields (auras it has been known by previously) and they connect to everything one way or another. Anyway I’ll not repeat here but please read the comment in Card from momster blog. as this understanding helps me alot.
It is so important to acknowledge how far we have come (and give ourselves a personal “high five” in the process…and smile!)
That’s what I try to do..and over the (seemingly) smallest accomplishments.
Your blog post is so inspiring to me along with the other posters’ comments and I am so grateful to have ran across this site!
Something I have noticed from just “being in the moment” recently is that when I come across something – either on TV or some random thought… it reminds me of something from my past and I just go with it. What is surprising is that it usually doesn’t last that long at all. A fleeting moment, actually.
This process is kind of new to me since I fought so hard to not own the different segments.
Connecting these emotional dots.
I can just imagine how much energy it has taken me over the decades now, to try and keep these feelings at bay. Kinda like standing waist-high in a swimming pool and trying to keep 3 or 4 balls under the surface…you know?
So much energy and attention is spent in trying to keep those little rascals submerged.
But lately (in no small part to coming here and sharing) I find that little tidbits of information/experiences from my past are emerging in a casual way and I just go with it.
A kind of inner wisdom.
Like – OK…this makes sense to me now.
NO WONDER I made this and that (incorrect) decision/formulation about myself!
Just kinda making sense of it all, (and cutting myself some well-needed and very much overdue slack) little bits and pieces at a time.
Someone up thread mentioned trusting ourselves. I feel that is very true.
Trusting our feelings. Trusting our very correct perceptions.
Coming home to our selves and finding a very wise, loving, patient, soft & tender place to fall within.
How do you get throught Christmas with your son? I can only imagine that he gets totally excited by the time it gets here. Maybe you can try looking at through his eyes instead of what happened to you at that age. (just a thought)
We learned something this last July while on our adventure in Puerto Rico: that to ‘feel’ we must stop THINKING about what we feel – to live in the MOMENT and refuse (shut down) all thought about . . . everything pretty much. Not the past; not the future, not even the ‘now’ – just ‘feel’ – and using those ‘feelings’ as ‘thoughts’ – one leading into another, another one from there . . .
And we started crying; the first time in what? 39 some odd years? “Letting loose” (we ‘killed ourselves’ – for lack of a better word) – and “felt” most sincerely. And we shook the ‘shame’; came together much ‘better’, discovered SO much about ‘ourselves’ and ‘our purpose’ and why we were ‘built’ this way . . . a truly remarkable journey for ‘us’ in huge, huge, HUGE ways (cannot describe; it is way too much) – but a BIG key and part was ‘shutting down’ and FEELING . . . it was hard to do. We now have a hard time retaining or recovering that state (drugs may have been involved; we were told by the hospitals afterward there was something wrong with our liver function, indicating our ‘friend’ had been administering some type of drug in our system) . . . but we remember it quite well.
“Feeling is the start of healing,” is something I was told by a fellow survivor a loonnnggg time ago – when I was just beginning my journey. And I think it is important – learning not to ‘shut things off’ and dodge and avoid by switching so much – or when switching, making sure we are switching to the right one – the one who is feeling ‘our’ pain –
LOL, whutta mess (I sometimes think to myself) . . . but then: what way do I have? No big choice in this: you either go forward or you fall behind (or stand still). None of them will do – but gotta make the best out of a worse mess without leaving an even greater mess behind.
Learning to embrace ‘one another’ can be hard. “Blending” at the corners and edges is hard. BUT enabling ‘one and another’ to feel their emotions – that is good – if “we” (me) can feel them, too.
Being with emotions and living thru it is very difficult! I found that I do better when, as soon as I begin to feel overwhelmed, or frightened, I back off and leave it for another day. Then, when I revisit it, I have toughened up to it some and it’s not so bad the second time.
Good luck with your journey!
Thank you for this!!
I love reading your blog because every time you post, I get to understand myself a little bit better. Because I am just starting my healing journey, I don’t know myself very well. So many things trigger me or make me feel “bad,” but I can never recognize the source of my “bad” feelings, or even what I am feeling in the moment… I just know that I don’t feel “good.” Any advice on how to become more attuned with emotions??
I can really relate to this and the way you describe it is exactly how I feel too.
For me, in the past, its been explained that it is Generalized Anxiety…but I think it goes deeper than that. Many times (most) times that I do something that is in my own best interests… I feel flattened by what I have always dubbed: “Run over by a freight train feeling”…thing is – it never seems to let up or diminish over time in both duration and intensity.
I have just recently figured out that this is probably shame and that these are “shame attacks”.
I can’t add much more than this, save to say that I heard about an author by the name of Brene Brown who has been doing extensive research in this little explored field. She has a few YouTubes on the subject.
(Just ordered and received a couple of books by her: “I Though It Was Just Me (but it isn’t) – Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadequacy and Power” and “The Gifts of Imperfection.” I haven’t started to read them yet, but I’m hoping to find some understanding.)
SHAME ATTACKS? EXACTLY! I have those all the time! glad I have a word for them now.
I was just diagnosed with PTSD about a week ago. I wonder if that is why i feel the way i do a lot of the time?
It’s a sucky feeling alright! Last night I had a complete meltdown over a bunch of little things that just snowballed together – luckily my fiancé was in town and helped me work through it.
To talk about the shame out loud. What it feels like. How I don’t feel deserving of good things. To strip it of its power, control and hold. To finally lift this secret veil.
Describing it and have it fall on his non-judgmental ears in trying to connect the emotional dots as to where it might come from and afterwards, I came to the conclusion…just what a bunch of bull-shit – it is!
Someone here posted something about how some people try and transfer/project their shame unto you and I think there is something to that.
Now whether it is intentional or not – doesn’t really matter. The important thing, I feel is that it is unacceptable and unwarranted to take on personally.
…because its just a bunch of bullshit!